Graphic Novels Teacher Resources

Khaled Hosseini’s video “Using Real People and Events” motivates learners to reflect on their own experiences and to use those experiences as the basis of a graphic novel that expresses a universal truth. The richly detailed plan...

Crank up the creativity in your classroom and encourage your writers to create graphic novels. This graphic organizer provides kids the opportunity to review basic parts of a graphic novel before creating their own. They define terms...

The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, dedicated to providing humanitarian assistance for the people of Afghanistan, provides a series of exercises designed to be used with a reading of the graphic novel version of Hosseini’s The Kite Runner....

Pass the tea! Using the resource, scholars participate in a Tea Party protocol to analyze text and images about inventions that helped meet societal demands. After sharing their observations with each other, they discuss visual elements...

Eyes on the finish line. Serving as the first part of the end of unit assessment, learners answer questions based on a text about how to write a graphic novel. Using what they've learned, they then create a storyboard about the invention...

The artistic choices Art Spiegelman made in his graphic novel, Maus, are the focus of an exercise that asks class members to compare classic comic book forms with Spiegelman’s panels and frames. Directed to specific pages and guided by a...

What is a graphic novel? How does it differ from a traditional novel? These questions launch a discussion of Fabio Celoni and Mirka Andolfo's graphic novel adaptation of The Kite Runner. Through a series of literature circle discussions,...

Using the graphic novel version of The Odyssey? Here' s just the thing. A teacher's guide complete with background information, discussion questions, and activities.

Why is visual literacy so important in understanding Maus? Introduce your class to basic elements of graphic novels with a game of pictionary. A list of 13 words are included, but you could potentially add some World War II-related...

As the culminating activity in a unit study of science fiction, young writers demonstrate their understanding of the genre by producing their own graphic novel. After deciding on the main elements of their story, individuals use a comic...

To do this engaging and pleasurable activity, your learners should have already read a graphic novel, and produced a piece of writing that can be reproduced into the format of a graphic novel. This exercise provides a script that...

The battle between code makers and code breakers has been going on for centuries and is a key tool of warfare. The contributions of the Native American Code Talkers of World Wars I and II are celebrated in a lesson that features a...

Mythic heroes, gods and goddesses, and epic tales come alive as young artists craft their own graphic novel or mind map for classic epics, including The Odyssey, Beowulf, Harry Potter, and Star Wars, identifying the...

Young scholars write and illustrate their own graphic novels. In this George Washington lesson, students collaborate to research Washington's life as surveyor, his involvement in the French and Indian War as well as the American...

Students begin reading the graphic novel "Maus". Using the Internet, they discover fundamental differences between Judaism and Christianity. Using excerpts from the novel, they identify animal metaphors used for nationalities and ethnic...

Mickey Mouse, Elmo, and Tintin? Belgian cartoonist Georges (Herge) Remi’s famous comic character launches a study of primary and secondary source material and the impact these sources have on storytelling. Class members also examine the...

Learners read about graphic novels and complete related activities. In this graphic novels lesson, students read about the genre and author Josh Elder. Learners complete novel analysis activities for the lesson.

Jane Eyre offers scholars an opportunity to practice reading comprehension skills. Pairs are assigned a word from the text, use their prior knowledge, and consider the context, connotation, and denotation of the word to posit a...

Students consider the implications of the Holocaust. In this World War II lesson, students read the graphic novel Maus at the end of a unit on World War II. Students discuss the impact of reading about the Holocaust as well as theme of...

Can I get a visual? Scholars work on their mid-unit assessments by analyzing vocabulary and discussing visual elements in Investigating the Scientific Method with Max Axiom Super Scientist. They then reflect on their learning by...

Do people really need “a newer, bigger Holocaust” in order to change? Or is it possible that by making text-to-self connections to the stories of others people that they can change? In order to connect to Art Spiegelman’s Maus, class...

Let's get graphic. Serving as the final performance task of the unit, scholars complete their graphic novelettes and design covers based on their sketches. Finally, they present their hard work to classmates. 

Maus is the text for a postreading activity that has class members using a cubing strategy to analyze, in depth, topics (racism, past and present, forgetting/remembering the Holocaust, representing the Holocaust) associated with Art...

What is an emergency, why is preparing for one important, and how can your pupils help others prepare for an emergency? Answer these questions and more with a short unit. Learners will participate in a variety of collaborative,...